Record Low Danube Levels Uncover Wartime Relics and Ancient Foundations

An unprecedented heatwave across Central and Eastern Europe has driven the Danube’s water level to record lows. The drought has revealed a range of submerged objects, from a World War II German motorbike and two soldiers in Budapest’s harbor to dozens of scuttled German warships near the Serbian town of Prahovo, and even sections of the Roman Constantine Bridge in northern Bulgaria.

PBS News Hour

• Budapest, Hungary – Staff from the Institute and Museum of Military History recovered a DKW NZ 350-1 motorbike, a military decoration and a petrol can from the riverbed. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (German War Graves Commission) also exhumed two Wehrmacht soldiers whose identity discs remained legible, allowing the remains to be reburied at the Budaörs war cemetery. The artifacts had lain underwater for roughly 80 years.

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• Prahovo, Serbia – Local fisherman Igor Skodric reported that at least a dozen rusted hulls, part of a fleet of up to 200 German vessels deliberately sunk in September 1944 to impede the Soviet advance, have become visible. Some ships are still loaded with weapons, prompting the Serbian government to begin removal operations that began in 2020 and were earlier estimated to cost €23 million.

New York Times

• Gigen, Bulgaria – On August 6, archaeologists from the Regional Historical Museum in Pleven documented exposed foundations of the Constantine Bridge, a 2 km Roman structure inaugurated in A.D. 328 and largely destroyed by A.D. 367.

Reuters

The Volksbund emphasized that the petroleum-laden mud preserved both the soldiers’ remains and their identity discs, a rare circumstance that prevented the death reports from reaching Berlin’s Wehrmacht information office. Serbian authorities, supported by European Union financing, are accelerating ship-removal efforts to keep the Danube navigable for the ten nations that rely on it.

Euronews

• “The wrecks appear almost every year, sometimes more, sometimes less,” — Igor Skodric

New York Times

• “For archaeologists, these moments are extremely valuable because nature briefly reveals an object that is hidden beneath the Danube for most of the time,” — Pavel Popov

Reuters